Linux | Copy only top 100 new files in directory and nested directories

I have storage something like below on AzureVM/Ubuntu

-/A
   -/B --> 10000 log files
   -/C --> 100000 log files 
      -/D --> 200000 images 
   summary.xml
   -/data --> 1000 csv files

Now because data size is very big to compute and do any operation there I want to take a sample of this data to develop my data analysis code.

I want to copy a subset to a different location which has the 100 newest files in each directory and nested directory and all the files on the root something like this.

-/New_Location
   -/B --> 100 log files
   -/C --> 100 log files 
       -/D --> 100 images 
   summary.xml
   -/data --> 100 csv files

I tried multiple commands based on cp but nothing is working for me and taking too much time to execute.

Can someone please help me here?

This can easily be done by selective archiving. You can tarball the files (only the intended ones) and then extract the tarball somewhere else. I am assuming that your log files have the same name except for the numbering (e.g. log1, log2 etc). So the first hundred files can be defined in tarball command as log{1..100}. For example:

tar -cvf copied.tar <path1>/log{1..100} <path2>/log({1..100} etc

When you extract, the original file structure will be recreated in the new location. So you may need to use "--strip-components=" option to truncate the redundant leading directories to avoid clutter.

You can usually divide this into three tasks, where you start with the directory structure and next, as in your case, limit files to 100. The last part inverts the match to scope up the rest of the files.

#!/bin/bash  
  
# Example START  
[[ ! -d A/ ]] && { \  
mkdir -p \  
A/{tmp/folder,\  
{A..Z}}/{images,data} && \  
printf %s\\0 \  
A/{summary.xml,\  
tmp/De5Loh4X.tmp,\  
{A..Z}/{{1..1000}_file.log,\  
images/{1..1000}_pic.{jpg,png},\  
data/example.csv}} | xargs -0 touch; }  
### Example END  
  
set -o noglob  
  
source=A  
target=target  
number=100  
# prune="-false"  
prune="-type d -path $source/tmp -prune"  
match='-name *.log -o -name *.jpg -o -name *.png'  
  
echo Create directory structure.  
find "$source" \  
\( $prune -o -type d -links 2 \) -printf %P\\0 | cpio -0 -pvdm -D "$source" "$target"  
  
  
echo Copy 100 files.  
while IFS= read -rd ''; do  
find "$REPLY" \  
-maxdepth 1 -type f \( $match \) -printf '%T@\t%P\0' | sort -zk1rn | cut -zf2- | head -zn $number | cpio -0 -pvdm -D "$REPLY" "$target/${REPLY/#$source\//}"  
done < <( \  
find "$source" \  
\( $prune -false -o -type f \) -printf %h\\0 | sort -zu \  
)  
  
echo Copy everything else.  
find "$source" \  
\( $prune -false -o -type f ! \( $match \) \) -printf %P\\0 | cpio -0 -pvdm -D "$source" "$target"